The Cancún climate-change conference

A sort of progress

The UN climate-change process is back on the road. Try not to crash it again

THE relief was as palpable as the surf on the beach. After the procedural nightmare of 2009's Copenhagen climate-change summit, its successor in Cancún, Mexico, played out surprisingly well, achieving a fair bit of what its overhyped and acrimonious predecessor had fluffed.

Copenhagen produced a lot of ill will and an “accord” put together by only a small subset of nations. In Cancún the ill will faded and large chunks of that accord were at last translated into the official UN process. These included $100 billion a year for developing countries by 2020 as climate assistance; a climate fund, partly under the auspices of the World Bank, through which much of the money might flow; and a much-needed deal on the conditions under which countries may be paid to decrease the damage being done to their forests. The details were left vague (see article). But even an appearance of progress constitutes progress, of a sort.

The worry is where the process might go next. Under the Kyoto protocol of the UN climate convention, all developed countries save America must make binding commitments to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. Rich countries bound by Kyoto are unhappy about this; developing countries, in the rare position of having an international agreement that demands things only of the rich, rather like it. The refusal of some rich countries to accept a second set of commitments under Kyoto (the current ones run out in 2012) was a big stumbling block in Copenhagen. It would have been in Cancún, too, without some nifty diplomatic footwork.

That the world's largest carbon emitters, China and America, are not bound by the protocol makes it absurd. That they will not be so bound—neither is willing to give up so much sovereignty to an international legal process—makes seeking its extension moot. No super-Kyoto seeking to constrain the world would fare better, even if it were fair to constrain poor countries that have next-to-no blame for the problem.

Yet some from Europe and from developing countries left Cancún talking of a revived push for broad-based and legally binding constraints. They argue that, without cuts in emissions far more drastic than those volunteered in the Copenhagen accord, there is only the slimmest chance that serious climate change will be averted. They are right. Unfortunately, that fact shows no sign whatever of turning into a winning argument. Rather, the pursuit of a universal legally binding agreement is doomed. If the negotiations try to achieve one, they will quickly return to deadlocked irrelevance.

There is an alternative that should be welcome to all. Take the good things agreed in Cancún—the fund, the deforestation deal, technology transfer and so on—and devote all possible energy to making them work. Make the UN process deliver for developing countries. And make it so useful that nobody would want to jeopardise it for the totemic triumph of a Kyoto renewal. Press for further emissions cuts too—but not in the everybody-or-nobody format of the UN. Deals struck in smaller clubs of like-minded countries, such as the Major Economies Forum, which brings together big emitters, may be more promising. One of the benefits of the Cancún agreement is that it has enabled the UN process to bless, retrospectively, progress made elsewhere.

It would be wonderful to solve climate change with a global deal. But no such thing looks remotely achievable. Better to use the newly roadworthy process to achieve worthwhile goals—to pay for adaptation, save forests, build up renewable-energy capacity—than to crash it again into a wall.